Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Here is my new and improved magazine cover. Inspired by the 2006/2007 and special editions of Mojo magazine covers (mentioned in the slide share presentation), I used bright colours and cartoon/comic book effect.

The font I used was Showcard Gothic as this seemed appropriate to the 80s theme, had a distinctive appearance and was still easily readable. The 2007 magazine of Mojo with The Beatles on the front cover used distinctive fonts as well, which made the general design a little more interesting. I think the font I have chosen adds more to the visual effect.

Both with the Q and Mojo magazine, most issues usually had an image that dominated and was enlarged to take up most of the cover space. This image would obviously refer to one of the main articles inside the magazine. As you can see, I have done this with the image of Heidi and me.

I noticed that on various issues of magazines, sometimes the main picture would overlap with the magazine’s title/logo and on others it would not. When creating my magazine on Photoshop, I tried both ways, however I preferred it when the main picture was behind the main magazine title because then it did not cover up the text.

I think my magazine is challenging media conventions because it has a very different style to the most recent music magazines I have researched. The inspiration to make this design came from older issues of the magazines both standard and special edition. A lot of the more recent issues of the magazines use darker and basic colours schemes and particularly with the Q issues, the background tends to be white or grey. However I am using vibrant colours and a colourful background in order to create an artificial and retro appearance because this is my own unique style I am developing across my three products. This distinctive style of mine makes my products more recognisable to my target audience.

I posted this design on Facebook and recieved some feedback﻿....

Although I recieved a lot of positive feedback and a lot of people said that it was a lot better than my original magazine, the bottom comment was the most important to me as Angela is a key member of my target audience. The fact that she'd 'definately buy it' was a big compliment, and it is satisfying to know that my magazine actually appeals to my target audience!